


half-dead romance.

by seungmoe



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Romance, kind of poet au but it's not very specified here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:00:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27991161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seungmoe/pseuds/seungmoe
Summary: You and Hyunjin have a little love-letter-writing business in the library. Things took a turn when you both received a request to write a love letter to each other.
Relationships: Hwang Hyunjin/Reader
Comments: 9
Kudos: 49





	half-dead romance.

Hyunjin and his black turtleneck were beginning to turn into a sore sight.

Stopping by the library entrance, you took a light step to the side to avoid blocking the exit space for others, then you kept your head up so your eyes land on the elegant figure across the room, sitting on a desk in the massive communal area.

Hyunjin sat with his head slightly dipped, his chocolate brown locks falling over his brows in pitter-patters against his lashes. His black turtleneck touched the base of his chin after he pulled it up to fend against the cold, and his golden daisy necklace dangled in front of his visible chest. He looked at his phone, sighing gently to himself, then he placed it back in his pant’s pocket as he stood up to head for one of the shelves to the side.

Hyunjin and his black turtleneck might be turning into a sore sight, but his face, his gorgeous face even from ten spaced out bookshelves away, would certainly forever remain a sight for sore eyes instead. 

Your eyes trailed after him until he disappeared into the books, and a defeated sigh left your lips with an invisible slump of your shoulders. Curse him for being one of the Lord’s many favorites, and curse the angels for giving you such a shallowly romantic heart. All it took was one look into his hazelnut brown eyes, the ones that matched his wooden brown hair so well, and your heart was all shaken up with irreplaceable attraction. 

Willing your legs to move on from the easily stricken state Hyunjin has put you in, you walked away from the library doors and fully integrated yourself with the calming, quiet air among the pens and papers. 

The fine line between the buzzy loudness outside and the tranquil atmosphere inside have always been one of your favorite things about libraries; the sudden mood change often so distinctive and blatant, and the way it forces you to notice the dimension change fails not to make you shiver.

You stopped when you arrived at the long table located in the middle of the study area. The library was starting to look more and more like the cafeteria in your university, where the metal tables were lined up straightly one after the other, with thin seats on both sides of the tables and just enough space for two people to squeeze through at the same time. 

The only difference the library made was that the desks and chairs were out of a thick, dark wood that was more pleasing to the eyes.

Taking your phone out of your tote bag, you dropped it on the chair just next to Hyunjin (you recognized his backpack sitting on top), pushed it closer to the desk, then you moved away from your reserved spot to the bookshelves on either side of the study area. Hyunjin was standing right in aisle 0305, one hand supporting an opened book and the other stuffed inside his coat pocket.

He could feel a presence next to him. 

Amid the swirling of pretty words, all of them constructing a brand new world within his brilliantly eloquent brain, he felt a much stronger presence interrupting his train of thoughts—the presence of your dainty figure radiating next to him, the presence of your feathery steps getting closer to him, the presence of you simply standing by him.

He smiled to himself, a gesture you would mistake as his delight for the fantastical event happening within the pages, and he greeted, “Little Poe.”

“Mini Atticus,” you retorted easily, the comeback rolling off your sweet tongue like a red carpet after weeks of repeating the same greeting to each other. 

After reaching for a random book on the shelf, you flipped it open to the middle of the page and silently celebrated to yourself that it was the start of a chapter.

Everything makes more sense when you begin at the start of a chapter, albeit you have not read anything else in the book; starting from the beginning of the book is not required if you have no plans to venture further into it after reading chapter eight.

“How have your classes been?” Hyunjin hummed out after a long moment of silence, bringing his hand up to flip a page before letting his instrumental fingers lay against the corner of the dotted texture.

You spared a faint glance at his hand, your eyes softening in a silent moan upon the sight of his smooth, slender fingers. You guessed that he plays piano the first day you met him, just out of curiosity and to break the ice between you two. 

Hyunjin didn’t play piano, but he said yes anyway, and after learning you enjoyed the sound of music, he went ahead to ask his friend for a couple of lessons.

“Good. I turned in my essay today, thank you for your help on that,” you said, giving him a nod but not sparing his a full glance. “And you?”

“Likewise,” he replied before he abruptly shut the book in his hand. “But since you didn’t help me with my essay, there is no gratitude for you today.”

You mirrored his action, your eyes rolling up in temporary annoyance. That was not a fair comparison. You asked him for help when both of you were sane and awake. He had called you up for help during the middle of the night, realizing that his essay was due nine o'clock the next morning and that he had completely forgotten to start it because of his messed up list of priorities. You were already half-asleep at that time, he was lucky you even picked his call up.

Once again—curse the Lord’s favoritism, curse your romantic heart, and curse his honeycomb voice.

“Book,” he said as he held out his hand to you.

You handed it to him while he placed his own in your hands. You received it and carefully shelved it back to the empty spot in front of you, while Hyunjin placed yours back in the spot on the upper shelf. 

It was a little, considerate action he started doing after he realized you have never voluntarily picked the books from the higher shelves for your standing-reading session. He had the chance to tease your height with it, but all he resulted in doing was that whenever he arrived at the library first, he would pick a book he found interesting and exchange it with the ones on a lower shelf, a place of your height.

You found out after a while. How you found out was a fleeting realization, you didn’t remember how you concluded that he was getting books from the top for you. 

Perhaps it was the constant oddness you felt when you see only one colorful book-spine out of all the other dull-colored ones, sometimes the spine would be decorated with a careful font and a shade of shimmering gold. All of them eye-catching, tempting you to pick them up.

Hyunjin didn’t stop even after you found out what he was doing, and it became a routine for the both of you. He was still surprised that you managed to catch onto his quiet gesture, and he waited until the day you would piece together that all the books he has placed before your eyes contained others’ words he poured out from the depths of his soul, for you.

Romance, thriller, poetry, and fantasy—anything he has ever loved, he found your silhouette in them, and like a child, he always anticipates showing you his discovery.

“Did Jisung give you the letter requests already?” You asked, your head arched up to look at him as he placed the book back into its place. 

“He did. We got one from him again, too.” Hyunjin nodded with a short huff, then he breathed out a giggle when he heard you scoff out a grimace from the side.

Han Jisung. What a name, considering the story behind it was nothing you and Hyunjin would easily forget even in the late future. He was a mutual friend of you and Hyunjin; he met you in English class and Hyunjin in philosophy, both of which he did not want to pick but had to because it was either (a) he needed the credit for his general education requirement, or (b) he would much rather not have to suffer through another science class, even if it meant having to learn about Socrates and Aristotle. 

Aside from being a mutual friend, and a little bit of a nuisance from time to time, Jisung was also an introverted flirt. He was shy, you knew that. He was a blushing mess when you two first interacted for a class activity, he claimed that he thought you were pretty, but you knew better than to believe his casual compliments. 

When Hyunjin mentioned that Jisung was actually a flirtatious little demon, you had not believed him, that was until the shocking day you got to witness the flirting happen before your eyes. 

The way Jisung managed to turn his shyness and awkwardness into a charming point of his was nothing short of miraculous, you almost wanted to applaud him for scoring the Instagram handle. You have no idea where that confident aspect of him came from, but you knew that it would pop up whenever he was determined to catch someone’s eyes.

And Jisung wanted to catch a lot of people’s eyes. 

At some point, you even started addressing him by the name “Hopeless Romantic,” and Hyunjin began asking him whether he has fallen in love with another fine maiden or another pretty bachelor every other week. 

Perhaps your harmless joke went a little overboard and gave Jisung a bit of a rage-spill, he decided to would retaliate by begging you two to write him a love letter. 

That was how your small love-letter-writing business started. 

You and Hyunjin had decided to play along and joined together to write a mighty good love letter for the girl Jisung met in the writing center. You both had a delightful blast writing it, albeit there were troublesome bickers about certain words and stylistic choices, but overall, not only did you two get to learn more about each others’ writing preferences, but you two also wrote a magnificent love letter that Jisung’s now ex-girlfriend for two months could not shut the hell up about.

All the silent lovers, after hearing the boasting of who happened to be (also unbeknownst to both you and Hyunjin) one of the most popular freshman girls, all decided to look to Jisung for a helping hand in their love life. 

And since Jisung couldn’t actually write a good love letter, yet still didn’t want to drop his dignity and reveal that the first love letter he sent wasn’t written by him, he decided to accept all the offers and dumped them all over the two of you.

Now, why did you both cave in and help? Sometimes when you think back to the day Jisung came to you with a list of names and a stack of cash, even after months of this unprofessional establishment, you still wondered why agreed to help him write an avalanche of love letters for people you have never met before. 

Hyunjin even mentioned it himself, on multiple occasions, that if he has to describe a stranger’s eyes again, he would simply blackout and never wake up.

But, truly, your decision was not hard to explain. 

Jisung charged those poor, lonely souls ten dollars per one love letter, with a guaranteed five-dollar return policy if the relationship does not end up being official even after the letter. The ten dollars would be split between the two of you or would be given to only one of you, depending on who worked on a love letter. It was quick and easy money, it was extra money, albeit semi-unethical and cruel.

You two got to keep the cash, and Jisung got to keep the secret. It was a win-win situation.

“How many letters has he asked us to write by now?” You asked, tilting your head to the side and raising your hand so you could count off your fingers. “There was this one girl in the dance studio, I remember. Long brown hair, pale skin, brilliant smile–“

“That’s Minjoo,” Hyunjin huffed as he stepped back after fixing the books and lining them up, then he smiled in approval before turning to you. “We wrote about the way she dances? Jisung gave us one short clip of her doing ballet and we milked the hell out of that video just for some details.” 

Your jaw dropped in recognition, your hand curling into a fist as you hit it against your palm in the moment of it. “Oh, right! I had Swan Lake stuck in my head for the rest of the week after that! I do think I have come to appreciate the song more, though. It is not that bad. I’ll say Tchaikovsky was onto something.”

“Really? I can recommend some classical music for you to listen to if you want?” He said, crossing his arms before his chest as he eyed you carefully. 

“Okay, I didn’t say that. I just said Tchaikovsky might be making some points that one time, I didn’t say I like the points he made,” you clarified, shaking your head and rapidly waving your hand next to your face to emphasize your rejection of his offer. 

When you quieted down and took a good look at him, you frowned at his amused expression. He was blatantly staring at you, his focused smile making your heart jump and twirl as a ballerina would. 

You began arching your ankles in dismay. Your arms fell to your sides slowly, your small hands curling into nervous fists before they crept behind the back of your sweater where they met each other in a huddle.

“What are you staring at?” You asked in a scoff, feigning annoyance and hoping that it would overwhelm the blush crawling up your cheeks.

Hyunjin shrugged as he gestured toward your figure. He looked you up and down, then he pointed back at himself, and he laughed. You tilted your head with increasingly furrowed brows, flabbergasted at his undiscovered intention of eyeing your figure before pointing at his own body. 

He could sense your confusion through the pouty lips and stoic gaze, both being a dead giveaway that you didn’t understand what he was trying to say, so he sighed in defeat.

“Our clothes, [Name],” he muttered as he ran a hand through his hair. “We’re wearing the exact opposite color again.”

You relaxed then, your eyes compelled to take a look at what you wore today and immediately compare it to what Hyunjin has on, even though you knew clearly what your outfits looked like today. 

You were wrapped in a sweater of milky white, a complete contrast to his turtleneck of angel black. Your pants looked of a dashing denim white, whereas his pants were of a dressy silk black. Your shoes were a pair of homey, used sneakers, and his were leather, heeled boots. 

You hummed as you looked up at him. That was what he meant, the complete contrast in your style was what he pointed out. You did take notice of that, you have taken notice of them since the moment you saw him from the entrance doors, you just didn’t think it was something worth pointing out.

“What about it?” You asked, not waiting for him to spin on your heels and walk out of the shelf aisle.

“It was just an observation,” Hyunjin laughed from behind, his hands shoved into his coat pocket as he trailed after you slowly. “I thought it’s funny how every time I wear an all black outfit, you manage to match me by wearing an all white outfit.”

“You wear all black all the time,” you retorted, stopping at your seat and pulling out the chair.

“Then I suppose you wear all white all the time as well,” he returned, sitting down and bringing himself closer to the table.

He was right. You do like yourself some monochromatic grace. 

“Touché,” you whispered out as you got closer to Hyunjin. You clapped your hands together then, quietly because of the atmosphere, and you smiled at him. “Alright, bring on the requests!”

Hyunjin sounded in acknowledgment, his tone somewhat exhausted and irritated. The first few minutes of having to write love letters always made him want to bang his head on the table and end it all for the greater good. 

It was likely that it was because writing about loving someone always makes him self-indulge in those strangers’ love life, thus being forced to recognize his tragic own, or the lack thereof, hence the tragic part of it. 

“You take the first three and I will take the other three,” Hyunjin said after he placed his notebook in the middle.

The notebooks were kept neatly on the outside but scratched and torn on the inside. The page Hyunjin opened up on already had lines and lines of scribbles, slicing through the finished letter requests carelessly with all kinds of blue ink, and the new ones he just added with his jelly black pen had long got smudges fading to the side like tiny wings to each word. 

Pairing with his unintelligible handwriting, there was nothing closer to trouble in paradise. 

“Remind me to buy you some handwriting exercise,” you commented as you squinted your eyes, your torso leaning forward to stare at his words. “How is it that you look so neat but your handwriting looks like Zeus crashed a thunderbolt in the art classroom?”

“Everyone has flaws. Having bad handwriting is mine,” Hyunjin retorted.

You snorted then, slowly moving your gaze from his notebook to him. There was a playful smile on your face when you spoke, “Just your bad handwriting?”

He fixated on your lovable face with a defeated glare. He would think of a retort, he really would, but the mischievous smile on your face was far too adorable, unbeknownst to you. And the effect it has on him was that it was interrupting his thought process, yet he couldn’t bring himself to look away. His eyes were fixated on you, always, whenever they get the chance to. 

Hyunjin will always choose to look at you.

“Very funny, [Name],” he uttered out finally, his arm reaching up so he could poke your temple and shove you to the side lightly. 

You swatted his hand away with a giggle before settling down on your seat again. His smile softened as you shook the energy out of your system, and he waited for you to calm down before he asked, “Can we get back to the letters?”

“Yes, let’s!” You nodded, reaching behind you for your bag and pulling out your pencil case and a thin notebook you used specifically for your love-letter-writing business.

“Good. Like I said, you write three, I write three,” he pointed at you, and him, and then he moved his finger in a circular motion, “and then we both write Jisung’s letter together.”

“Collective effort for the big boss,” you mused without looking at him. 

Unzipping your pencil case and picking out a couple of pens consisting of ink of a vibrant shade of pink (for drawing your little hearts around the paper), a mellow shade of yellow (to underline the important words), and a normal shade of black (for writing the love letter). 

Hyunjin smiled as you laid out your stationaries and flipped open your notebook to the first page. You always needed more than one pen, and they were always of different colors. The colors you pick for writing changes every other day, sometimes every other week, but he has learned the secret code behind all their purposes. 

It took him a while, but his observant-self prevailed and he finally got down what each colored pens were for, not just for writing love letters but for studying as well.

Compared to his minimalistic choice of a single black-inked pen and a small notebook, you were nothing short of a delightful rainbow, and Hyunjin found the divergence rather endearing, if he could think so himself. 

It was the fact that despite being drastically different beings, in fashion, in height, in handwritings, and in personal organizations, you two still managed to find a common ground and fit each other perfectly.

For the most part, at least.

“Can we for once not speak of flesh and bones? Can we for once just describe love with a more…” Hyunjin sucked in a breath, his legs crossed as he leaned against the chair, a pen stuck between his delicate fingers. He waved his hands about in the air, thinking, then he continued, “a gentler approach, hmm?”

Yes, for the most part, you two could find a common ground. But when it came to writing a love letter together, such arguments often happen. It was one of the few reasons why you two have chosen to split up the love letter requests instead of writing all of them with a collaborative effort. 

For one, it is much quicker to split them up. 

It takes each of you less than half an hour to finish one love letter on your own, but almost close to a full hour to write only a fraction of one together. You have learned that the hard way by having to write love letters for Jisung’s ever-changing lovers. Those always take you two the longest, yet you two are unable to split up Jisung’s letter due to how massively tedious his criteria for a good love letter is.

Sometimes you thought about asking him to write one himself, arguing that it would be more genuine that way, but both yours and Hyunjin’s words were to no avail.

For two, as aforementioned, writing love letters puts both of you in a very romantic trance. 

It decorates rose-colored lenses before your eyes, having to think about love for hours straight and pretend that you are in love with the receiver of the letter. Not only does that make both of you upset, with the unexpressed and ‘unrequited’ love you two held for each other, it also makes you fall in love with each other even more when you are discussing a love letter together. 

You both thought it would be best to allow the emotions time to blow themselves over. There was no need for expansion or magnification. Only the small bud of affection hidden beneath your chest was good enough, anything bigger than that would be troublesome to handle.

For three, last but not least, both of you write in such different ways! 

You two grew up liking books and poetry, stars and constellations, but both of you got separated into different categories of one big genre. 

You were one for passionate love; you write about love with rage, with power, with a light that blinds the eyes and melts your skin. Hyunjin, on the other hand, has always been one for subtle love; he writes about love with, well, love, always sensually, slowly, and carefully.

You are the blood trickling down your pierced heart, and he is the only pair of delicate hands that are willing to soak through the redness.

“What’s wrong with flesh and bones?” You asked, blinking at him both incredulously and offended. Pushing your back off the slat of the chair, you leaned toward Hyunjin and purposefully blinked at him with mocking curiosity. “I’m sorry, do you not like to be loved violently, Hyunjin?”

“You can love people violently while still make it gentle and silent,” Hyunjin pointed out, putting his hands on the table as the tip of his ink pen dipped against the piece of paper that only has a lover’s name on it.

“Oh, but why do you want to make it silent when you can–“ you pursed your lips together, your hands making grabby gestures at his face as if you yearend to squeeze his cheeks together. 

Hyunjin wasn’t wrong. You knew very well that one could love violently and quietly at the same time; having read the poems and books he was fond of, and having read his written pieces before, you have got more than a faint idea of how one could love another with burning silence—it was in the art of everlasting memories, unprovoked kindness, and constant recollections of a lover’s face. 

Reading his love letters was like listening to the pitter-patter of the rain play out a smooth melody on a piano placed under the sky, the petrichor scent wrapping you in its embrace. It was like the slowing down of your heartbeat as you catch an unofficial lover’s eyes from across the room, both of you knowing that you are both in love with each other.

And you adored the way he could create such imagery. No wonder his love letters were so popular amongst all the receivers. But it simply wasn’t you

Furrowing your brows in frustration, your thoughts throwing against each other in disarray, you huffed out a heavy breath and calmed down. Then, putting your hands together, you asked, “Don’t you ever… wouldn’t you get the urge to just scream at the top of your lungs, that you love somebody? Wouldn’t you want to show everyone?”

“I am not very fond of showing off my affection,” Hyunjin said with a shrug. “Especially not to people.”

“I never said it is limited to other human beings,” you argued, looking away for a brief moment before returning to him. “Chant it to yourself! Dance around in your apartment, play songs that remind you of them, sing your love out loud and think of them with each step you take!”

Hyunjin laughed to himself, and you gasped in disbelief that he has the audacity to laugh at your method of coping with your affection. But you didn’t know. You had no idea that his laughter came not from ridicule but from resonance, you had not the faintest idea of all the things he has done to tame his silly, silly affection for you.

Because if anyone knew anything about dancing and singing their heart out, it would be Hyunjin, and if anyone knew about declaring their affection to the world, it would be Hyunjin.

There was a playlist he made for you, of songs that reminded him of you, whether it was songs that he has discovered or songs he heard you hum next to him in the library. The playlist sits on the throne of his speaker, it lays in the empty red solo up on his desk, and it flies in the echo of his sing-song voice as his muffled, rhythmic steps filled his cozy apartment.

Every single night, he reminds himself of you. Day in and day out, he cares about you, he thinks about you, and he dances to the thought of you. He sings to the moon about his love for you, he whispers to the sun about his love for you, he waltzes to the wind about his love for you. Hyunjin loves you through the day, he loves you through the night, and everything is well because of it.

“I will take your advice and do that,” he said, caving into you with a smile. “But we do need to settle with my method, though. We have written to this girl before, and from what I remembered, she pointed out my input more than yours.”

A noise of protest left your throat as you took a moment to recall what Jisung has told you two about the girl’s reaction. You couldn’t remember any of it, just like the many times you could never take into account what Jisung has to say, because he has too much to say, and most of the information he lets out is often unnecessary. 

You would just have to give Hyunjin the benefit of the doubt that he wasn’t just trying to get you to listen to him. He probably wasn’t lying, though. You have seen her before, once or twice. She was quite the mellow person; cute dresses and lovely short hair, neat and bubbly, seemed like the romantic type. 

“Fine,” you said after clearing your thoughts. Reaching out for the notebook, you pulled it away from Hyunjin’s hand and brought it to your side of the table. Reflecting his confused look with a shrug, you nudged your head toward the paper and said, “You do the thinking. I’ll write and change things up as we go.”

The process went smoothly from there, with a few bumps and stumps of you complaining about his repetitiveness and him retorting with a scoff and a light kick to your chair. The clock spun until the end of the letter, where you finally got to curl Jisung’s nickname (you and Hyunjin have got a variation of those, today you have decided to use “Cool Boy Hannie Han” as the signature) to close the love letter.

“There we go!” You pulled away from the table and smiled down at the masterpiece before ripping the page off Hyunjin’s notebook.

He frowned when you tore it off clumsily, leaving jagged paper spikes at the inner-spine of the notebook. Bringing it back to his hands, he brushed the uneven road of torn texture and sent you a glare, one which you returned with a bashful smile and a shrug. 

He shut his notebook with one hand, a defeated purse of his lips remaining on his face; how dare he to have never learned permanent anger, how dare he allow his affection to influence his dismay.

“Okay, I’m sorry,” you said, exasperated with the way he was still staring at you with a deadpan look. “I’ll get you a new one when you use that one up.”

“I didn’t even say anything,” Hyunjin mumbled, putting his notebook back into his bag before he stacked the ripped out love letters in his hands.

Jisung should be right around the corner to pick them up.

“You would be surprised about how telling your eyes are,” you said, wearing your bag on your shoulder and slumping down on the chair with a sore wrist. 

Hyunjin hummed then, his brows raising with amusement. Right, such telling eyes he has, yet somehow you could never notice all the endearment that rushes into them when your eyes meet his. He put them there, both accidentally and purposefully and uncontrollably. 

He put all of them there, and for months now, you still have not noticed it.

Sometimes he feels like he would explode near you, he really does. Sometimes he feels like he would start loving you the way you love to be loved. Sometimes he feels like he would simply crumble with stuttering words and red ears spilling out of him, all over his chest, covering every inch of him. 

And he will love you, violently, loudly, embarrassingly. 

Just the way you spoke of it in your letters. 

However, today wouldn’t be the day of his inevitable downfall as there Jisung was, rushing into the library with a half-fallen beanie and a big guitar case strapped behind him. 

You snickered when he almost tripped over his feet, and the way he frowned at you when he arrived at the table told you he saw your horrible reaction.

“I can confiscate your ten dollars, [Name],” Jisung commented immediately after he settled down in front of you two.

“I can tell everyone who is behind these letters,” you retorted while holding up the wrinkled papers.

Jisung rolled his eyes, knowing this wasn’t an argument he wanted to have, nor was it one he could win. Reaching over to snatch the papers out of your hands, he shot you a smirk of gratitude where his cheeks jut out and his nose scrunches up, and he turned to Hyunjin to do the same. 

He stacked them together, grimacing at the difference in paper quality (yours were wrinkled, Hyunjin’s were not), and he reached behind him to unzip the side bag of his guitar can so he could shove the letters inside. 

“Oh, right, I forgot something,” Jisung said after he had fished out a few crumbled up, soggy-looking cash from his jean pocket. 

His counting movement slowed down and his hands clutched onto the stack of cash tightly instead. Looking up from the money, his eyes began to dart between you and Hyunjin repeatedly in a nervous motion, as if he had forgotten to do something important that would garner some harsh reactions from you both. 

Trying to get you two worked up about something takes a lot of time, but Jisung knew not to upset the both of you, since you two could be quite the harsh critic of his personal life; he learned that the hard way and he would a hundred percent never cross that line again. Besides, as two people who were so in control of their negative emotion, once you burst, you _really_ burst. 

Jisung was ill-prepared for any form of blatant, friendly hatred and criticism on this long, tiring day. He just wanted to gather the love letters, give you your last-minute requests (which was the hard part), hand you both the money and be on his merry way back home where his leftover cheesecake would be waiting for him in the refrigerator. 

That was if Felix didn’t accidentally eat it.

“Uh-oh, you are giving us the panic look,” Hyunjin mused from his seat, looking down on his lap and fixing his posture before he faced up at his friend again. He arched a demanding brow, giving Jisung a knowing look. “What did you do this time?”

“Don’t assume I did something bad,” Jisung replied with faint exasperation, his eyes squinted as he swatted his one hand toward Hyunjin’s direction in a hitting motion. Then, settling back down, he cleared his throat and said quietly, “I need to talk to the both of you… separately… about something…”

Interested piqued in your chest. You sat up straight and scooted back on the chair, making yourself appear taller in your sitting position. “Why? Did you get into trouble?”

Jisung sighed, his eyes averting from Hyunjin’s curious ones to your questioning ones. He appeared more impatient than before now, a somewhat weary look flashing before him as he laughed dryly. “Again, don’t assume I did something bad.”

“Then why can’t we both listen to what you have to say?” You asked. “You got secrets to hide from us?”

“Haha, okay, [Name],” Jisung crossed his arms, smiling at you with a calculative gleam, one that screamed how he knew something you didn’t want him, or anyone else, to know. “Do we want to start telling secrets now? Because I have a mighty big one to tell.”

Judging by the way Jisung’s eyes briefly shifted to look at a clueless Hyunjin, he was talking about your unrelenting affection for the latter boy. You pursed your lips together, leaning back against the chair and tapping your feet on the ground in annoyance. 

How do you always manage to forget that he knew of your feelings? And, most importantly, how dare he use it against you!

“No, we don’t have to do that,” you said then, eyeing him with taunt as you slowly got up from your seat. You left your bag on the chair and gestured for Hyunjin. “Can you watch it for me, I’ll just talk to Jisung real quick.”

“Yeah, no problem.” Hyunjin nodded.

Jisung shot you a sheepish smile when you got around the table to his side. Your arm immediately went around his shoulder, dodging his guitar as you slipped through the gap around his neck to put him in a light chokehold. He groaned out loud, not purposefully but he would claim he did so, and you immediately released him as eyes snapped over to look at you both for causing a commotion.

You two made it around the corner and stopped in the middle of an aisle. You crossed your arms, shifted your weight to lean against one leg, and you waited for Jisung to speak. 

“Look, I was never going to tell him that you like him,” he said first, making sure you knew he would keep his boundaries and that it was all just an empty threat. 

“Then stop acting like you will,” you retorted, causing him to click his tongue.

“See, that threat should have lost its credibility long ago. I keep saying it but I never once did it,” he said, matter-of-factly widening his eyes and shrugging his shoulders. “You should have known that I was never going to go through with it.”

“No. What I should have done was never tell you about my crush on Hyunjin,” you grumbled with a jut of your bottom lip, clearly regretting the decision you made just a measly month ago.

“Hey, you were the one who needed to get the feelings off your chest,” Jisung said, holding his arms up in surrender. “I didn’t force you to say anything, the alcohol and you being an awfully honest drunk did.”

“I know!” You clicked your tongue in annoyance, stomping your foot with silent anger and to refrain from kicking Jisung in the ankle. Giving him an exhausted glare, you waved your hand urgently and rushed, “What did you want to tell me?”

Jisung brightened at the mention of his task, and he sheepishly giggled as his hand went up to scratch the side of his head. He looked away from you briefly, glancing at the books as he faked a cough before he announced, “I have one extra request for you to write.”

You snapped your head over, as abrupt as lighting your glare sent him a zap of shivers. The night was approaching, and you have spent your last hour drowning in other people’s business while neglecting your own. At least those love letters were for thirty dollars, if all goes well for the receiver and their relationships. 

But what about all the times you’ve had to lurch yourself away from the desire to stare at Hyunjin forever? What about all the seconds you spent fighting down the unruly signals you could potentially send, just because your heart wouldn’t stop thumping at the way he looked sitting on the chair and scribbling down his unintelligible words. What about the disappointment you felt when you have to look and him and remember how today would be another day you couldn’t confess your feelings?

Even if you could, though, what would be Hyunjin’s likely reaction? You reckoned it would not something good.

All you wanted to do was go home and bother yourself with stressful tasks, be it cleaning or studying, as long as it takes your mind off Hyunjin you would do it. But writing another love letter was definitely not one of the choices. 

“Can’t you ask to Hyunjin do it?” You asked in a whine, furrowing your brows at Jisung knowing that he has always been one to be persuaded by a softer approach. 

“I–I would, [Name], I totally would,” Jisung said, clasping his hands together with a troubled smile. “But I think it’d be weird if he has to write a love letter to himself.”

* * *

Hyunjin glanced down at the forty dollars in his hands, and he looked back up at Jisung with a stoic expression.

You seemed a little agitated when you headed back to the seat, as did Jisung when he approached the table and asked Hyunjin to follow him to another corner of the library. 

Hyunjin didn’t feel all that annoyed that he was requested to write another love letter on such short notice, since Jisung was prone to telling him of the requests only one to two days before the deadline anyway. What he was surprised about was the fact that someone asked to address the love letter to you.

And Jisung, silly little Jisung, actually thought he would be a good candidate to write it. He, under the knowledge that Hyunjin has a massive crush on you, actually thought that it would be a good idea to ask Hyunjin to write you a love letter on behalf of somebody else. 

“Who is the person?” He asked, crunching up the dirty cash in his hand and stuffing it in his pockets. He stood straight, with a slight lean of his head that made him look extra intimidating, and his eyes were filled with underestimated bitterness. “Who requested the love letter?”

“I don’t know,” Jisung replied with a rushed shrug, feeling less nervous than he should in the face of a close friend. “The person who gave me the request told me it was a friend of theirs who asked for it, but since they didn’t know me, they thought it’d be easier to have a friend ask instead.”

Coward. Couldn’t even spend the effort to find the writer and ask for a letter themselves. 

“You know I am not happy about this, right?” Hyunjin said then, “The fact that there is someone else out there who also likes [Name].”

Jisung frowned, tilting his head with pursed lips as he gave Hyunjin a look of distaste. “You can’t stop other people from finding them attractive.”

“I know that–I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean it like I don’t want anyone to like them,” Hyunjin clarified with disbelief, finding it strange that Jisung managed to take him the wrong way even after knowing him for so long. 

He was never the unreasonable, jealous type! Jisung knew that! 

“Knowing that there are rivals in my pursuit of [Name]’s affection simply makes me nauseous.”

“Oh, no, you’re doing it again,” Jisung mumbled straightforwardly, his voice monotonous and his eyes a wall of steel. “You are doing that thing where you speak like you’re a man wearing a turtleneck.”

“I am a man wearing a turtleneck.” 

“Yeah, a man–sure, haha.”

“Do you want your letter written or not?” Hyunjin asked, sighing heavily.

Jisung nodded eagerly, then his enthusiasm slowed down as he gave Hyunjin a long look. When he spoke again, he made sure he sounded more serious than he usually would by lowering his tone. “It’s just a love letter, Hyunjin.” 

“A love letter can speak a thousand words to them, that I cannot with my lips,” Hyunjin whispered.

Jisung paused to smile at him, unsure of how he wanted to react to a sentence he didn’t have the mushiness in him to appreciate. He walked closer to Hyunjin, reluctantly patting him on the shoulder, then he said, “A thousand words that only mean something if the person likes you as well. And I reckon [Name] likes you a big deal.”

Hyunjin chuckled under his breath. Well, at least Jisung learned a thing or two from those momentary bursts of weird sentence structures of his. 

He wouldn’t be surprised, Jisung has always been a quick learner, as academically unmotivated as he could be. He might just join him in the club of ‘speaking like a man in a turtleneck’ one day, and Hyunjin would make sure he gets all over the younger boy about it.

“I think if they like me, I’d know,” Hyunjin said.

“No, you wouldn’t,” Jisung replied casually, giving Hyunjin another smack on the back. “I’m not teasing you or anything, you really wouldn’t know.”

Hyunjin flashed him an incredulous look, wanting to ask more about his words but only finding himself being pushed out of the book aisle and rushed to write the final love letter. 

He bid Jisung a brief farewell, watching the boy stumble away from the library and disappear into the crowd that just happened to walk past outside the entrance door, then he returned to the table where you were busy writing things down on a piece of paper.

“Last minute love letter?” He mused as he sat down and pulled his chair closer to the table.

You blew at your face, trying to get rid of the itch in your eye and refusing to pull away from the paper to rub at it. “Yeah. I assume you got one too?”

“Yes, unfortunately,” Hyunjin replied, reaching behind him for his bag where he fished out a pen from the side pocket where he had a few emergency black ball-pen attached to the pouch. 

He looked over at you and nudged your leg with his feet, catching your attention. He widened his eyes a fraction then, his chin jutting up slightly as he motioned for your notebook. “Can I get a paper?”

You grumbled but obliged, flipping a page so you could rip a paper out. The same jagged line met his skin when you handed it to him, and you paid no attention to the way he continued to grimace at how incapable you were at tearing papers from books. 

As you returned to the letter at hand, the one you found yourself unable to write with satisfaction, you heard Hyunjin ask.

“Who are you writing for?”

You froze, licked your lower lip, and looked up at him with a shrug. “No idea. Jisung told me their name but I don’t know them. What about you?”

“Same as you.” He smiled.

And then it was quiet from there, with the both of you scratching your heads and searching through one vault after another in search for an ounce of idea. 

This love letter was somehow much harder to write than any other love letters you two have ever written. 

Perhaps it was because the receiver was someone you held true affection for, and words simply wouldn’t suffice with all that you would hope to convey to each other, especially not when you two were both trying to cater toward each other’s likings in terms of writing style.

You were trying out a mellower approach, you were thinking about what Hyunjin would want to hear and what kind of words could grow out his fondness. What makes him want? What makes him feel unfrighteningly fragile? 

Could the thought of absentminded hands reaching out for each other fill him with sweetness? Would the thought of tracing faint scars in the night scorch him with intimacy? Would the idea of drowning in exhaustion together, lazy and unbothered on a quiet Sunday, paint him with a sense of gentle yearning? If you were to touch his lips with your own, barely there, just close enough. Would he shiver in gold? Would he long for you?

Would you have to turn mellow just for him? Into dainty angels and white feathers, just for him to like the words you poured out?

Hyunjin licked his lower lip, his fate as a writer not so much better than yours. 

Your fervor, your vigor, your energy—they shine upon him like the sun, the closest anyone has ever touched him in his life. And he felt down, he was down, that he could barely replicate it, that in your eyes he may be deeply flawed for being a rather delicate boy. But, truly, your love was one of a kind to him in every way possible. 

The fire, the heat, the spirit! It wages wars and brings upon his senses the best calamities. He just knew being loved by you could never be boring, it could never be doubting, because he would always know it. 

And he wanted to be the same way. He, too, wanted to burst through the door and smother you; he wanted to know you, the deepest and darkest part of you; he wanted to love you, catastrophically, devastatingly, tragically. 

He wanted his heart to burn, he wanted to hurt, and he wanted to love you. And he would.

Both of you would. With your faux fragility, with his ill intensity, both of you would turn inside out for the sake of each other. 

The sudden drop of your pen made Hyunjin look away from the paper. He raised his brows at you, watching you stretch your arms and slump against your chair with a pout. Reaching over to poke your cheek with the tip of his pen, he laughed. 

“Tired?” He asked softly.

You turned your head, pushing against his pen, and you nodded. “Yeah, and famished.”

He brought his hand back to the paper, quickly signing the last bit of the letter before he clipped the cap back to his pen. Returning it to its original place, he went ahead to fold his letter nearly, tugging the corners against each other with the most meticulous motion, then he pressed it against the table with his palm before he turned to you,

His eyes gleamed when he asked, “Want to grab dinner together?”

You looked at him, your awkward hands shoved inside your jean pocket. “Are you paying?”

“Did we not both just get forty dollars from Jisung, or was that another fever dream of mine?” 

“Don’t be petty, Hyunjin,” you kicked your legs, “we have been friends for half a year now! The least you can do is treat me to dinner!”

“Hmm,” he hummed in amusement after heaving a sigh, his defeat was quick and brief. “Fine, but I get to pick where we’re eating.”

“Not a problem!” You grinned, arching your torso over to his direction while your head dangled against the top rail, almost falling off the wood. You looked at him expectantly, your smile holding mischief he could rarely get tired of. “I kinda want boba, though.”

“We can stop by a shop after dinner,” he said.

You grinned in excitement, your feet turning from side to side with your heel pressed against the floor and your toes facing skyward. After letting yourself gush about the food, you looked at him again and asked, “Your treat?”

“What? The drink?” He asked, zipping his bag up.

“Yeah!”

Hyunjin laughed, wanting to roll his eyes at you but his eyes would only turn themselves crescent moons upon the view of your smile. “Okay, my treat.” 

You smiled, looking away from him so you could watch the entrance door of the library. And you sat there, completely unaware of the way he glowed next to you.

* * *

Walking inside the library felt a little different today. 

Most of it remained the same. You could still feel the abrupt change of atmosphere; rowdy on the side, peaceful on the inside. Hyunjin still stood on the other side of the library, his head dipped and his chocolate brown locks falling over his brows, resting against his pretty lashes. 

His black turtleneck wrapped perfectly around his neck, and his daisy necklace dangling in front of his chest. He wore glasses today, the thin and golden frame sliding down his pretty nose.

Like yesterday, when everything remained hidden and you two were still sworn to your own secrecy, he looked at his phone, sighed gently to himself, then he placed it back in his pant’s pocket before he stood up to head for one of the shelves to the side.

You bit your lower lip, finding yourself quiver at the sight of him as your memories of yesterday night flooded back to you. 

The dim table light in your room, the shuffling of your parents’ quiet footsteps outside as they attempt not to disturb your studying, and the crashing realization that the love letter Jisung handed you before you went to dinner with Hyunjin was written by none other than the man who treated you dinner and walked you home.

Those ugly, ugly scribbles of those smudged, jelly black ink. 

The love letter he wrote next to you in the library was addressed to you, written by him, given to you by Jisung. 

There were many thoughts regarding the situation, but you had not been able to find it in yourself to text Jisung about it. You spent the rest of the night dumping yourself into a pile of assignments due weeks from this day, just so you wouldn’t have to worry about whether Hyunjin wrote this letter with genuine feelings and whether your letter landed in his hands as well.

You continued on as if your insides weren’t churning in pain. You walked to your designated desk, put your bag down on the chair next to where his backpack sat, pushed the chair into the desk, and you leaned against the chair with your eyes closed for a quick minute. 

You willed yourself to act normal, repeatedly telling yourself that everything would turn out fine, and you stood up straight again to walk toward the book aisle.

Before you took a step, though, your eyes blinked and an alarm sounded in your head. Looking away from Hyunjin, you reached down to rummage through your bag before you pulled out a piece of paper that was messily slipped between your agenda—the love letter, right. 

You would probably need it for the conversation with him, not sure why you thought you two would discuss it but you kept it with you just in case.

Hyunjin could feel your presence next to him, just like yesterday, and the day before that, and every day you approached him in the library. 

Instead of pulling himself out of a made-up universe written inside a thick book, he had to bring himself out of a trance he has kept himself in since yesterday evening after he sat down on his couch and decided to give the surprise love letter a read.

Those were your words, he knew, printed in your colors (pink for the gentle hearts, yellow for the pretty words, and black for the gracious body of the letter) and written on your notebook paper.

Your words, speaking of him in such an endearing and fervent way, making him wonder if there were traces of yourself poured in the words.

“Little Poe,” he greeted gently, as usual. 

“Mini Atticus,” you retorted quietly, as usual.

Silence wrapped around the air, vibrating and protruding until one of you would be brave enough to take the first step and break the ice. 

You looked ahead at the line of books, your eyes staring at the single purple-colored spine among all the other dark-colored ones. Reaching over to take the book out of its spot, your brows furrowed at the slip of paper stuck between the purple and the black book.

Pushing it back, your fingers reached for the paper instead. The second you saw the blank lines on the folded half, you froze. It was the paper from your notebook.

You tugged at the corner of the paper and pulled it out of the tiny gap, and you held it in your hands with silence. Hyunjin side-eyed you, and he inhaled deeply when he saw that you got the letter in your hands. 

Clearing his throat, he closed his book and looked up at the shelf before him, acting as nonchalant as he could.

“You wrote me a love letter,” he said.

You nodded. “You wrote me one too.”

“That I certainly did,” he dipped his head. “Do you think Jisung planned all this?”

“Oh, yes, definitely,” you laughed, for a second letting go of your beating heart and letting the thought of Jisung’s comical-self soothe you down. “We will have a talk with him later.”

“That we will,” he said, and it took him a moment before he mustered up the courage to say, “I hope the letter was of your liking.”

You breathed out carefully, finally having the courage to look up from the wrinkled paper of your love letter to him, and you turned to him. You found him already staring at you, his gaze a tender rose blossoming with a likeness, and your heart crumbled beneath your feet like the terraformation of the moon.

“It was… chaotic,” you said. “I didn’t really like it, but I enjoyed reading it.”

Hyunjin raised his brows. He needn’t any clarification to accept your criticism, he had already prepared himself for such comment while he was inking down the words one by one yesterday. It must have been the way he kept trying to write like you that made the letter such an array of disaster. 

Unfortunately, your letter went down the same path as his did. He remembered wanting to both clutch his head in frustration and laugh in delight at how badly you were trying to make your words sound vulnerable and feathery, how desperately you were trying to write the way he would in the assumption that he would like it better if he read what he was used to reading.

It was only after he read the letter, when he slumped against his bed, his limbs sprawled out and his eyes a dazed dream reflecting on the warm ceiling lights—it was only then when he realized one thing: he didn’t have to write like you, and neither did you have to write like him. 

Because for so long, while disagreeing with the way you crafted your love letters for others, he has adored your words. He admired the way your words could bring about the sound of drums, the way he could hear a loud ensemble flaring in the background when he reads them. 

And he reckoned—he hoped—that you felt the same way with his.

All you two ever needed to be was yourself, and there would come unconditional love.

“I am not understanding the paradox here,” Hyunjin replied to you after a momentary lapse. He turned his body toward you and crossed his arms, the book still in his hand. “Did you like it or not?”

“No,” you said. “The letter was atrocious. I know what you are trying to say, but I didn’t like the way you said them.”

“But you enjoyed reading it?”

“Yes. Very much so.”

“And that peculiar contrast came from what, exactly?”

Hyunjin watched the glimmer in your eyes rose from its grave. The lights were seeping through the curtains, overflowing the edge of the windows, taking him to the brink of insanity as you smiled with such soft lips, and you spoke, with such a soft voice.

“Because you wrote it for me.”

And it was important. The love letter, the terrible love letter. It was important to you, because Hyunjin wrote it for you, and you love him so.

He understood that, somehow, without any words being spoken in explanation. 

Perhaps it was because his heart resonated with that reason, because he too treasured your preposterous letter for the fact that you were the one who poured your heart out to him and not anybody else. And he knew that everything you wrote on there was true, they were real.

When you talked of the lavenders and the rainbows, when you talked of his sun-kissed cheeks and your sky-filled lips, when you talked of the exact moment of gentle exhilaration where your skin meets his hand, and there was an unfathomable fulfillment in your life. It was all true.

“I meant everything I wrote in the letter,” Hyunjin said then, his words small yet so loud. “Absolutely everything.”

You pursed your lips to suppress a smile. You failed. 

“Thank you,” you said, giving him a nod, “likewise.”

The air around you two changed with just one simple word. Everything was different for the both of you now; the flicker of your eyes, the quirk of his lips, the light brushes of your hands. 

You could look at each other and see the ocean, the sky, the mountains, and you send each other pictures of the sunset because it reminded you of each other. 

They were all different, but still, they were warm and delightful. 

“Well,” Hyunjin looked away from you and turned to the books. He smiled, feeling an excitement rush through him. “Book?”

You tease his ugly scribbles, he will scold you for spending unnecessary money on colorful pens; you complain about him wearing the same damn black turtleneck every day, he will point out how your colorful clothes make you stand out among the crowd; you think love is a burning vessel for passionate bones and raging hearts, he thinks love is a gentle feather of light touches and soft words.

You two are completely different people, but still, you two have learned each other, and you to have loved, is loving, and will love each other. In exaggerating and unwavering ways, with flesh and bones, with ghosts and whispers. 

Black and white no longer contrast. It makes a whole. Just as his black turtleneck and your white sweater, like yin and yang, you two make a whole.

“Book,” you replied under your breath as you stepped up.

And right there, between the bookshelves, in the middle of the aisle, you two stood closer than ever. 


End file.
